Dolores Hayden

E

Exuberance

Exuberance sips bootleg gin from a garter flask
with a ruby monogram “E.”

She wears a red dress one size too small,
eyes wide, she flirts with everyone, dares

Lincoln Beachey to fly until he runs out of gas,
rides a dead engine all the way down.

She watches Ormer Locklear climb
out of the cockpit two hundred feet up,

tap dance on his upper wing
as the houses of  honest families

with their square-fenced yards
slide below his shuffle. An oval pond

winks in the sun, like a zero.
Exuberance challenges pilots